Images

Martian Landscape With Rock Rows and Mount Sharp (Stereo)

This stereo landscape scene from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows rows of rocks in the foreground and Mount Sharp on the horizon. It appears three dimensional when viewed through red-blue glasses with the red lens on the left.

The left-eye and right-eye cameras of Curiosity's Navigation Camera (Navcam) took the component images for this mosaic during a pause in driving on the 548th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars (Feb. 19, 2014). The Sol 548 drive covered 328 feet (100 meters).

Images taken from orbit and used in planning the rover's route toward lower slopes of Mount Sharp had piqued researchers interest in the striations on the ground that are formed by these rows of rocks. This particular outcrop is called "Junda." Similar striations are apparent on other patches of ground along the planned route.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project's Curiosity rover and the rover's Navcam.